ALGORITHM AND COMPUTATIONAL EXPERIMENT OF GERT NETWORK MODELING FOR DESCRIBING THE TRANSPORT AND TECHNOLOGICAL CYCLE OF UAVS IN THE APPLICATION OF PESTICIDES AND FERTILIZERS

D.I. Kovalev

Authors

D.I. Kovalev National Research University “Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Agricultural Mechanization Engineers”

Keywords:

precision agriculture, variable-rate application of pesticides and fertilizers, unmanned aerial vehicles, GERT network modeling, transport and technological cycle, autonomous route planning, operational time costs

Abstract

The paper considers an algorithm and a computational experiment of GERT network modeling of the transport and technological cycle of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for variable-rate application of pesticides and fertilizers in a precision agriculture system. The proposed approach uses a GERT network to formalize the full cycle “sensing – analysis – decision-making – plot treatment – visualization” involving two types of UAVs: one for soil condition monitoring and one for application of working solutions. A software implementation is developed that interacts with simulated sensors, satellite and ground components of the agrotechnological system and provides simulation of step-by-step UAV movements, changes in field plot states, and the formation of control actions. Based on the computational experiment, the distribution of operational time costs is analyzed for several types of spraying UAVs and their daily performance in terms of treated area; it is shown that autonomous GERT-based route planning makes it possible to reduce the total time required to complete flight tasks by approximately 2-3 times compared to manual control, which corresponds to a saving of about 50–70% of operational time. The results obtained confirm the effectiveness of GERT network models for the synthesis and verification of adaptive control systems for fleets of agricultural UAVs and for optimizing the use of pesticides and fertilizers under precision agriculture conditions.

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